About “Two Words”

Off of 2004’s The College Dropout, Kanye, Mos Def and Freeway drop this fast-paced track dedicated to the titular purpose: the verses are done with two words (or two stressed syllables) for every quarter-bar.

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When you hear “Two Words,” and you hear after my second verse and that choir goes up but the choir starts before my verse is over because I just had to keep spitting, and the choir goes up to the second part, and that little 14 year old boy hits that crescendo note before it gets to Freeway’s verse, and the piano sprinkles behind Freeway’s verse, and after Freeway’s verse we don’t go to the original chorus but we go to an amp out that a choir would do for real, “Throw your hands up, throw your hands up, throw your hands up, throw your hands up.”
When you think about the $10,000 I spent on them, and I had to go to someplace in the Hamptons, or near the Hamptons, that looked like Camp Crystal Lake off a scary movie, and round the Harlem Boys Choir up after the label had countlessly never listened to me, and then finally listened to me and tried to force me to get the Hezekiah Walker Choir because they are only $3500 but after they did it, it wasn’t really good, and I was set on getting the Harlem Boys Choir.
I got those 16 boys all in the room and designed that whole track for them to sing that, and the way Mos Def’s voice sounds on that, “Red! Black! Green! Motherfuckers, get back,” and the way we put an effect on the piano so it sounds like it’s an electric guitar but it’s not, it’s just like an amp driven guitar, and it hits the crescendo at the end so it’s like three endings. I do that on so many formats. I gave you three endings on the “Through the Wire” video. I gave you three endings on “Two Words.” And then I hear that and they gave me 4 out of 5.